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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23157697">The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvd1945/pseuds/rvd1945'>rvd1945</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>A Song of Ice and Fire &amp; Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AD&amp;D, D&amp;D, F/M, No Not That D&amp;D, cRPG Elements, the dragon has three heads</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:49:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,669</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23157697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvd1945/pseuds/rvd1945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Tower of Joy was born Prince Jaehaerys III Targaryen amidst a bed of blood. Spirited away across the Narrow Sea by three Kingsguard knights, Jaehaerys grows to maturity in Braavos. In Valyria, a dragon stirs. In Winterfell and King's Landing, strife festers and discord is writ large upon the world stage. Rhaegar was correct, perhaps, in the letter of the prophecy, but mayhap not in the spirit...</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark, Jon Snow/Sansa Stark/Daenerys Targaryen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Jaehaerys I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div>
  <p></p>
  <div class="resolved">
    <p> </p>
  </div>
</div><p>
  <span>Like many of his bloodline, Prince Jaehaerys III of House Targaryen was often plagued by strange, sorcerous dreams. These dreams were of the future, or perhaps the past, but they were invariably true; and when his lessons were done and the afternoon was his, Jae would often find himself climbing to the top of the House of Black and White to stare out into the sea. The gates of Braavos were the colossal legs of the Titan of Braavos, a great bronze statue of a man, and as he looked beneath its loins to see ships passing into and out of its shadow, he pondered the meaning of these dreams.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>While Jaehaerys had inherited his father’s voice, he had inherited his mother’s heart, so while he had a great love of music and often made quite the living as a street musician, the wolfs-blood in him gave him no patience for books and book-learning. Of course, his great talent was for swordplay, but the less said of his distaste for the act of learning how to kill, the better. His understanding of its necessity aside, he never thought he would quite get over his aversion to wanton and wholesale slaughter, and thought fools of those who listened to great ballads of war and thought it a glorious enterprise.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The boy’s caretakers were a colourful bunch. Most of them were former Kingsguard and were eternally loyal to his father, Prince Rhaegar, but there was one in particular, a sorceress clad in red, whose services they had employed to help Jaehaerys interpret his dreams. Her name was Melisandre, and she was of Asshai, and therein lay shadowbinders and darker sorceries still. Given the late Prince Rhaegar’s obsession with prophecies and the occult, the leader of the Kingsguard, Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, believed it to be wise to have the trueborn heir to the Iron Throne informed of the darker lurkings of the world. Jaehaerys took to matters of Valyrian sorcery quite quickly, for Melisandre was not eager to pollute the mind of one so young with the heady prospect of blood magic, or indeed aught darker than those arts which were of old studied by the Dragonlords of Old Valyria, and the High Valyrian tongue spilled from his mouth at times like a river down a waterfall.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was evening, and the tide was going out when, on Jae’s fourteenth nameday, he sat up from  his seat on the steps of the Temple of R’hllor, the last melodic strains of his lute ringing in the air for a good solid minute before he stood. This was the day when he played for the Lord of Light’s adherents for charity. Melisandre said it was to purify his soul from the magic they practiced so often, and to so little avail. Jaehaerys did not mind, as he so rarely had need for the money he had accrued during the day, his profits going to maintenance of his caretakers’ armour, weapons and other equipment, and very rarely, when Braavos was not at war, toward the rent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He had heard from Lord Varys the Spider that Viserys was deep in debt because of the opulence upon which he insisted; Jaehaerys had little patience for the trappings of finery and despised flaunting wealth he did not possess, even considering his princehood. The Beggar King, they called Viserys, and the Black Prince, the few that knew of Jaehaerys’s background called him. Jaehaerys took pride in his simple living, and knew that once he won the Iron Throne, he could ill-afford lavish spending given the Crown’s crippling and growing debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys had nothing but respect for the Spider, whose intricate web-weaving served the realm. He took it in stride that the only reason he knew of Daenerys’s and Viserys’s financial situation, or rather, their lack thereof, was because he was infinitely easier to deal with than Viserys. He knew that the smallfolk did not toast over him in secret; in fact, he knew that most of Westeros had never heard of their Black Prince. If the smallfolk over there were anything like the Braavosi, they toasted their fortunes and misfortunes in equal measure, because so very few of them could tell the difference. No matter who was in power, the lives of the smallfolk were shit, plain and simple, and a change of out-of-touch monarchs was not going to change that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That was why Jae played for the people—to get to know what they were like. And he was beginning to think that Lord Varys at the very least respected him for that, for working to curb his bloodline’s worst impulses in a way that Viserys never would.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He walked into the house alone, as he often did. Mercenary work and working with the clergy meant that his caretakers were rarely around. He went into his room and dropped onto his straw bed—feather mattresses being an extravagance he would not wish to see whether or not he could afford—and sighed. He knew it was his name-day, but unlike the petulant child he imagined he might have been were his family in power, he didn’t rightly care that no one was there to celebrate it with him. The day of his birth had left him motherless, and so that morning, he had gone to the Temple and lit a candle for her, for, as Melisandre was fond of reminding him, the night was dark and full of terrors. He hoped that for each candle he lit, one for each year since he had begun doing this when he was six, he would light her way through the darkness of the afterlife. A fanciful notion for a man grown, but it was the one vestige of his childhood he allowed himself to keep sacred.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A knocking on the door brought his attention. Usually, when people knocked, it was not with good intentions. That, or one of Varys’s ‘little birds’ sent to keep tabs on them. In case it was the former, Jae went into the front room, grabbing a longsword from above the hearth, and keeping it out of sight as he opened the slot in the door.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“By the Seven, Jaehaerys, don’t show your face through that slot! I could easily stick a dagger through the slot and kill you, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>then</span>
  </em>
  <span> where would we be?” cried Ser Arthur. Ser Oswell Whent shared a chuckle with Ser Gerold Hightower, and the two men filed in behind the world's greatest swordsman and closed the door behind them, carrying with them a case. It was too girthy to be for a sword, and too short to be any other weapon of any sort of import.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And here I thought you had forgotten my nameday,” said Jaehaerys. He helped the oldest of the men, Gerold, bolt the door shut. Gerold was nowhere near as spry as he once was, and, gallingly for him, often needed help for what he considered to be the smallest of tasks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Forget?” asked Ser Arthur. “I may have neglected to mention, aye, but I never forgot… I never forget…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He pointed over to the case as it was set down in the corner. “I had hoped to present you with Blackfyre. The ancestral sword of your house in your hands would prove a potent rallying cry. But alas, we turned up nothing in our search. Here, however, was something smuggled across the Narrow Sea for you. The Spider’s work, I should think, and we have him to thank, but here it is, kept pristine and wrapped in canvas all these years.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jae walked over to the corner where the case was kept, and knelt to unlatch the great black thing, only to pull out a high harp. It was of a single great hunk of ebon wood, shaped and not carved, by the arts of Old Valyria, arts that he himself had inherited. Inlaid into it was but two rubies, eyes for the dragon that roared out from the shape of the instrument; and though Jaehaerys had never before seen the instrument, he knew it, and knew to whom it once belonged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course, it may need a bit of restringing, but…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s perfect,” said Jaehaerys. “These are dragon intestines, sang into the living harp…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Every word that Jaehaerys spoke, he knew to be the truth. The rubies had the same quality as Melisandre’s fires; staring into them was like staring into an unfathomable, intelligent abyss. He cradled the harp carefully and sat upon a chair nearer to the hearth, and his fingers strummed a chord on the gutstrings. The harp seemed to thrum in his hands, as if it was awakening, and his dragons’ blood thrummed in time. His fingers found the notes like they were born wound about a harp, and he began to sing. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“</span>
    <span>Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Where is the hand on the harp-string, and the red fire glowing?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall wheat growing?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring;</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Renewed shall be </span>
    <span>blade that was broken</span>
    <span>—t</span>
    <span>he crownless again shall be </span>
    <span>king</span>
    <span>.</span>
    <span>”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>With the final strains lilting upon the air, the three men were stunned into silence. One set of hands began to clap from behind them, and Jaehaerys lifted his head and saw Melisandre standing there, stunning as always and as unknowable as the sea, her face set into a smirk as she delighted in surprising these hardened Kingsguard with her sudden entry. Jaehaerys could smell no sorcery in the air, not that she was in the practise of taking such things lightly, but she was there all the same, likely through the passageway that connected the house to the Temple of R’hllor. Not something that they took lightly, but something that she clearly did.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“An apt prophecy, my promised prince,” said Melisandre as she came forwards towards Jae. The men parted around her; nine years of her influence had endeared her to them somewhat, after all, men who had been a part of prophecy, and were true believers in what they had seen. Rhaegar had believed in prophecy, the prophecy of the Prince That Was Promised and the Battle for the Dawn, and though Rhaegar believed his son Aegon VI to be that promised saviour, Aegon was dead, despite what Jon Connington thought. Jaehaerys, then, was one of the last Targaryens, of the blood of the Kings of Winter and of the Dragonlords of Old Valyria. “An apt prophecy indeed. Though I sense there will be another to come to these shores ere long; your destiny and hers are intertwined. This I have seen.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what am I to do about it?” asked Jaehaerys. “To the extent that anything can be done.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, first you might as well get some experience leading, and for that, you’ll need to register with the Adventurers’ Guild,” said Ser Oswell Whent.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Adventurers’ Guild was an invention of the Freehold, when magic was waning and not yet gone. In Essos, it continued, and had never made its way to Westeros. When the Valyrian Freehold was alive, it oftentimes employed adventurers to look over the great landscape the empire encompassed, allowing them to do things such as kill beasts for farmers, or guard great Freeholders. Nowadays the Adventurers’ Guilds were all that held the Free Cities from collapsing in on each other. It was required for every member of one of the guilds of the Free Cities to register with the local Adventurers’ Guild; usually there were four classes, and combinations thereupon: fighter, thief, cleric, and tradesman. Occasionally there were anomalies, like fighter/thieves and fighter/clerics like Thoros the Red, one of the acolytes from the Free City of Myr, but those were few and far between. Most people were one of the four. And of the four, only fighters and clerics warranted respect. There were thieves’ guilds, but they were largely underground affairs, and assassins were given to the House of Black and White.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have every confidence in you, Jae. Just do it like we practised,” said Ser Arthur, clapping his charge on the shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am Jon Snow of Westeros, and I would like to register with the Adventurers’ Guild as a permanent resident of the Free Cities,” Jaehaerys replied, affecting a northern Westerosi accent for the purposes of blending in.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“There you go, Jae,” said Ser Gerold in passing, preparing supper with Ser Oswell. “That’ll do.”</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>In the days of Old Valyria, when magic was waxing and not yet lost to the world, there was created a series of artefacts, or perhaps entirely one artefact. The true cause of the artefact is not entirely known; and yet, it was used for one purpose: for the registration and cataloguing of adventurers. It recorded the adventurers’ names and unlocked hidden potential within said adventurers for the sole purpose of creating soldiers strong enough to defend Valyria. This was created through sorcerous means far more complex and elevated than mere base blood magic, the sorcery of peasants; this was an artefact of High Valyrian sorcery thousands of years in the making, when magic was a fact of life and not a sign of the past the Maesters of the Citadel were doing their utmost to destroy. And yet, like all magic, it was inextricably linked to blood and bloodlines. It was said that only those with the blood of Old Valyria, however weak and strained, could truly be elevated by the artefact, for High Valyrians were known for elevating only their own; all the rest were slaves. That or Ghiscari, but the less said of the Empire of Old Ghis, the better.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was pertinent because of what happened when Jaehaerys Targaryen provided his blood to the artefact; for blood was the only currency still in use that the artefact accepted to ascertain the identity of the one using it. When Jaehaerys, under the guise of the northern Westerosi bastard Jon Snow, dressed in the northern garb and furs his protectors had painstakingly procured, pricked his finger and gave his blood to the artefact, within the great book of adventurers there was transcribed a great deal of data, much of which he did not know the pertinence of. High Valyrian was not a language easily read, for fear of the slaves learning the tongue. He saw many words and many numbers. But what was easily read in the book to any who knew the tongue of the old Freehold (and most educated men and women in the Free Cities still did), was a name:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Jaehaerys Targaryen.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>And beneath that, there were three words to describe his class:</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Fighter/Mage : Bladesinger.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>“We are so fucked.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys fell to one knee, and felt the rush of </span>
  <em>
    <span>something </span>
  </em>
  <span>within him. He felt aflame; he felt frozen. He felt incredible ecstasy; he knew excruciating agony. He knew devastating hope; he knew crushing despair. All at once, this flowed through every inch of him, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the world as though he were another man, born anew. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And unbeknownst to him, marked across the world, there was a comet that came across the skies, a red comet with three tails.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jae… Jae! We have to get out of here, we have to get out of here right now!” Ser Oswell said, his tones rushed and worried, panicked almost. Jaehaerys’s eyes took in what was happening: the shock of the class activation caused him to miss the group of mercenaries that began to gather around him and the plainclothes knights of the Kingsguard. They all had their swords out, Ser Oswell with his arming sword naked, Ser Arthur with Dawn drawn and held in both hands, ready to fend off any incoming attacks. Ser Gerold had his smallsword and his Valyrian steel dagger out, but he was more concerned as usual with leading his honour guard, now revealed, and less with fighting anyone right now. Ser Oswell hauled him to his feet with his free hand and helped him stand on his own. Jaehaerys drew his longsword and held it in one hand, as his instincts told him to do something with his other hand. He waved his free hand according to what felt right, and in his hand erupted a ball of sickly green fire. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jumping forth, he thrust his hand forth and let loose a baleful gout of flame, that same sickly green colour with yellow on the edges of it, and several mercenaries were caught in the attack. Their screams shook Jaehaerys to his core, even as he nearly collapsed from exhaustion at having cast the fire spell. They screamed as though their very souls were set alight, which, for all he knew, they were. They patted at the flames, but that only spread them to other parts of their bodies. There was an intoxicating note to the screams, but it only made Jaehaerys further sick to his stomach, as though he had eaten far too rich a meal and was now about to sick it up. He was inwardly very glad of this, for that meant he was going to be no fire-obsessed Aerys, but by the same token, it was singularly unhelpful at this point in time.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The remaining unburned mercenaries took that as their cue to charge. Jaehaerys raised his sword and parried an incoming strike, and, swinging the blade of the Westerosi sword out, he put his palm into the man’s chest hard enough to cause his attacker, off-balance as the man was, to stumble. Jaehaerys pressed the attack, striking with all the fury of his dragon-blooded ancestors, and burying his blade into the man’s head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The man went to his knees, and Jaehaerys put his boot against the man’s shoulder and with both hands wrenched out his sword, looking around for another attacker. He knew he could not cast another spell; he knew it like he knew that he still had both hands. He was only at the first level of mastery, after all, and he hoped that he would eventually come into a greater deal of power as he ascended in the echelons. But all the same, the instinct that was fencing came to him naturally as ever, and he batted away a number of different less well-trained blades. The blood-joy of the intermingled lineages of the Kings of Winter and the Dragonlords of Old Valyria came to him, then, the lines of conqueror and warden inextricably intertwined as the sword sang the song of blades, cleaving flesh of foe and striking out like the lashing tongue of an adder, the tail of a manticore.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The Kingsguard knights came to his aid, and together the four men were a whirlwind of steel and blood, painting a masterpiece of red. When finally the last of the blade-strokes fell, the blood-joy faded, the wolf and dragon within both calmed, and the youth was left with the truth of the slaughter that had just happened for no reason other than the name with which he was born. But something in him calmed his stomach, and he did not vomit; instead he let out a deep, shuddering breath, and let that be it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Come, Jaehaerys. Let us be away,” called Ser Arthur, always and endlessly the voice of reason. “There will be more ere long.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Fuck the Usurper,” said Ser Oswell with no shortage of vitriol. “Arthur’s right. Go ahead with him. Gerold and I will be the rearguard!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye,” said Jaehaerys, striking out with Ser Arthur into the streets of Braavos. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That Red Priestess is going to have Hells to pay when we get back,” Arthur swore. “Somehow I know that all this sorcery and magic business comes back to her.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It is not my will, but the will of the Lord of Light that you must contend with,” came Melisandre’s voice. She stood by the door to the guild and was looking up at the sky, which drew Jaehaerys’s eyes in the same direction towards the triple-tailed comet striking through the skies. “The first mage since the Doom has been chosen, and magic has returned to the world. You must away to Valyria, if you are to claim the right of your birth, Dragonlord.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Witch! I swear, I—!” swore Arthur.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Cleric,” she corrected, her voice uncharacteristically terse. “Or Canon, if you wish to be technical about it. I am neither maegi nor Shadowbinder, so term me not a witch. I will not suffer it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Melisandre…” Jaehaerys began.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Melisandre smiled sadly. “You were my greatest student, Prince Jaehaerys. Much and more stands betwixt you and your rightful throne, but here I can aid you no longer. Our paths must part here. Such are the workings of Fate.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys nodded and embraced Melisandre. “Such are the workings of Fate. We will meet again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do not make a promise you cannot keep, your highness,” Melisandre said teasingly. Then, more firmly, she said, “Your blood is precious. Do not go spilling it, lest it fall into the wrong hands.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye,” said Jaehaerys. “I understand.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And he did; true magic came from the principal gods of Old Valyria, Balerion, Vhagar, and Meraxes, but the magic of blood, the sweet song of carnal mysteries and sacrifices, came instead from the Labyrinth beneath Lorassyon, from the horrific Drowned God and his eldritch ilk. Ill forces to contend with, most certainly, and utterly opposed to the Dragon Gods.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Know also that the Lord of Light watches always, and that he may be found in the most unexpected of places, from the fire that consumes the heathens to the blood of the mightiest of kings.” With this cryptic remark, Melisandre stood aside and allowed them into the bowels of the temple. “There is a way out of the city beneath the temple. You must away! Fly!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys nodded, and ran, the last of the Kingsguard knights following him into the temple, leaving behind Ser Oswell Whent and Ser Gerold Hightower to sacrifice themselves for their prince. Jaehaerys burned to urge Ser Arthur to allow the other two knights to catch up to them, but one look at the Sword of the Morning’s harrowed eyes told him that now was not the time, that it might never be the time. Jaehaerys thought, then, to light pyres for the first two to sacrifice their lives so that he might live. Such a thought placed a burden on his heart, a burden that would only grow the longer he stayed away from the throne of his ancestors.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The way of which Melisandre spoke was a small bay underneath the temple, for ferrying supplies secretly into the city in times of siege, built when the cult of R’hllor was smaller in this city and many were suspicious of this fire-god that demanded sacrifices to feed the flames. It was in this way that they smuggled in goods for the Red Priests to subsist upon and give alms with, to engender more and more goodwill from the people of Braavos, until there was no more distrust in their hearts and they could hear the word of the Red God. There, at the dock, was a small boat, and Jaehaerys and Ser Arthur quickly clamoured into the vessel, before casting off. Jaehaerys took the rudder while the stronger Ser Arthur used the oars, and together, prince and knight manoeuvred out of the cove and into the bay that surrounded the isle upon which Braavos sat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Fate was with them, for they rowed out on the afternoon tide, which carried them, with a little extra effort put in for good measure, to mainland Essos. The fortune-seekers did not pursue them that far, and so Jaehaerys counted himself blessed once more. Getting out of the boat, he helped Ser Arthur pull the dinghy up to the shore, and then camouflage it in the foliage on the edge of the beach. Then, they started walking. But before long, from out of a copse of trees ahead, there came a Northern Westerosi man, a Red Priest, who had with him a pair of saddled horses. Jaehaerys, having with him only his Westerosi longsword and his father Rhaegar’s high harp in a bag on his shoulder, rejoiced inwardly upon seeing the packed saddlebags.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your destination is Volantis. That is where the Golden Company is assembled,” said the Red Priest in dulcet tones. “There, seek out the Temple of the Lord of Light, and the priests of R’hllor there will direct you further.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That shouldn’t be difficult. The Temple is the largest building in Volantis,” noted Ser Arthur.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you for this, umm…?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eirik,” he replied. “Eirik of Karhold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thank you, Eirik of Karhold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Anything to aid the Azor Ahai,” replied Eirik. “For the night is dark and full of terrors.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“For the night is dark and full of terrors,” replied Jaehaerys. As Eirik then bowed and retreated into the shadows like a Faceless Man, Jae looked to the horses, and asked Ser Arthur, “Now, how do you ride these things?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Ser Arthur was about to respond, but then slapped his forehead. “We forgot to teach you how to ride, didn’t we?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye, that you did,” replied Jaehaerys, a touch annoyed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, now’s as good a time as any to learn. Trial by fire, as they say. You put your foot into the stirrup and then lift your leg over the horse’s backside to mount. Don’t do it over its head or you’ll spook the poor beast,” Arthur instructed. “When you’re on the horse, slip your foot into the other stirrup, and then squeeze the horse’s sides, gently, mind, with your thighs to get it to move.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys, following these instructions to the letter, mounted up while Ser Arthur did the same, and then swiftly, the riders pulled out of the copse and onto the road. “I hadn’t heard that the Golden Company had cut ties with Myr, had you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, but I suppose they’ll be at Volantis by the time we get there,” Arthur replied. “These Red Priests and their prophecies. It’s not natural. Makes my nose twitch.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Ser Arthur, I do believe you just used a freeman’s expression,” remarked Jaehaerys.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, none of that,” Arthur urged. “Until we get to Volantis and are safely in the Temple of the Lord of Light, I’m Adam Sand, you’re Jon Snow.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A pair of Westerosi bastard bravos making their way to Volantis to find their fortunes?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aye,” said Arthur. “Now, about what happened back there…”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have no idea what happened. I just gave blood and suddenly I could do magic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve seen green flames like that before, but none that burned like that. Wildfire burns like hell flames. What you did chilled the blood.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Witchfire,” Jaehaerys said unbidden. “That was witchfire.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, at least you have a name for it,” groused Arthur. “Speaking of which, I want you to stay away from wildfire, boy. Stay away from it and anyone who peddles it. Your family has a bad relationship with the stuff. Your grandfather put it under King’s Landing to blow the whole city up. Your father told me that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“The more I hear of King Aerys, the less I like him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Your father had no love for him either,” said Arthur. “No boy likes having to experience his mother being torn away from him to be raped by her brother. And no knight likes having to guard a man that would do that to his own sister. Madness or not, your grandfather was a monster through and through. Your father would have changed that, but Robert the Usurper killed him on the Trident, putting an end to the hopes and dreams of many people.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are the inheritor of that dream, Jon. You are the heir to your line. It is said that every time a High Valyrian child is born, the gods flip a coin. I have seen naught but greatness in you, child. But I will not see another prince fall to the Usurper or his dogs for any reason. It is a great responsibility you have inherited, and I will be here to help you carry it, but I shall not be here forever. It is important that once we get to Volantis, you begin to build your power base. It will serve you for long after I am gone. For after I am gone, </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>will be king.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yes, Ar…Adam,” replied Jaehaerys.</span>
</p><hr/><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys awoke that night from a restless sleep, panting heavily, his undergarments stained with cold sweat. Essos was warm and muggy during the day, but at night the water in the air chilled and made it quite inhospitable. He stood from his bedroll, and walked over to the saddlebags. The high harp would bring him peace in time, but the blade would be more useful and exhaust him, he hoped, into a dreamless sleep. He brought forth the steel longsword in his pack, and began to run through the elaborate drills his Kingsguard protectors had taught him. But the restless energy would not abate, and so he continued well into the wee hours of the morning. There was something coiled inside of him, wrapped tight as a drum.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Arthur came forward some time after dawn, looking around and finding Jaehaerys practising, his shirt off and his lean musculature gleaming in the early morning sunlight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why are you up so early?” asked the Sword of the Morning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Dragon dream,” replied Jaehaerys tersely. “Daenerys has been married off to the Dothraki.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What of it? You didn’t think you could </span>
  <em>
    <span>prevent </span>
  </em>
  <span>it, did you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And why not?!” Jaehaerys cried, still focused on his bladework.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No one warrior, no matter how skilled, can take on Khal Drogo’s horde. They number in the tens of thousands, and every one of them, man, woman, and child, will die to defend him, and his claim to his new bride,” Ser Arthur scolded. “That is their way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And is it our way to consign my aunt to her fate?! She is of the blood of the dragon! She deserves more than this, more than whatever depravities Viserys will heap upon her in his mad quest for power!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And it is because she is blood of the dragon that she will survive,” replied Arthur.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t know that!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Queen Rhaella, gods rest her soul, survived every depravity Aerys heaped upon her!” said Arthur. “Your aunt is of her blood. She will be fine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys stopped swinging his sword, and turned to Ser Arthur, throwing his arms out in a gesture of powerlessness. “But she will suffer!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Such is the way of all who live, child,” said Arthur, stepping forward and clapping his hand upon Jaehaerys’s shoulder. “Whether they be smallfolk or highborn, it is the lot of all mortals to suffer. It is the lot of all men to die. Avoiding this is futile at best, counterproductive at worst.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jaehaerys panted with his exertions, and Arthur led him back to camp. “You are angry. The rage of your bloodline is legendary. Take care that it does not consume you to madness like it did your grandfather.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The princeling nodded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The campsite they had chosen was next to the Sweetwater River, an aqueduct that brought clean water into the lagoon upon which Braavos was built. Jaehaerys felt bad about bathing in it, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and the last thing he needed was to attract flies with the dried sweat on his brow. And so, bare-chested, he bathed in the water of the aqueduct as quickly and thoroughly as he dared, before returning to camp to find that Ser Arthur had already broken it down and was now loading up the horses for the next leg of the journey along the Braavosi coastline, for they were not going to cross the mountains, not in autumn with winter fast approaching.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The horses bore them aloft, being of good stock, and Jaehaerys and Arthur lamented their fallen comrades even as Braavos became smaller and smaller in the distance. Neither noticed that there had been a small, furtive man slipping out of the Adventurer’s Guild before they made their escape, a cutthroat who had desecrated the bodies of Jaehaerys’s Kingsguard, and promptly sent their heads across the Narrow Sea. If they had, perhaps all that transpired beyond the channel from then onward could have been avoided. Perhaps, perhaps. But Fate was a fickle mistress, as Jaehaerys would soon come to know, and the ambitions of men were far more malicious and ill-meaning than any such feat of serendipity.</span>
</p><p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Sansa I</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Apologies for the late release--I had planned to put this out three weeks ago, and it just wasn't working with me. Here's to hoping further developments come faster.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Winter was fast approaching, and it was colder than a woods witch’s tit the morning that Sansa and her siblings had to stand out in the courtyard, exposed to the elements, when the royal procession finished its journey up the King’s Road to the capital of the Kingdom of the North. Robert Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the et cetera et cetera et cetera, was a corpulent, hairy beast of a man, more bear than stag, which surprised Sansa. She had heard many a tale of King Robert’s strength and skill at the Trident, his valour and his cruelty in the days of the Rebellion two decades ago, from her father, Lord Paramount Eddard, and so to reconcile that image of a gallant, if brutish, knight in her head with that of this gasping, rotund creature that rode in before her, was a truly herculean task. He knew how to put together an impressive column, though, she granted; the mounted freelancers and hedge knights and Stormlands bannermen made for a grandiose if motley sight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shortly thereafter came the wheelhouse, which was surely the reason for their delay; a massive, fine, cumbersome thing that rattled on wheels made rickety with travel. Therein rested the royal children, no doubt, together with… no, there was Queen Cersei on horseback near the wheelhouse. And Sansa had to admit, the title of ‘most beautiful woman in Westeros’ barely did the queen justice. She rode sidesaddle, an impressive feat, Sansa noted absently, clad in flowing garments threaded through with Lannister gold. As if on cue came the Westerlands knights thereafter, their ostentatious silvery armour shining in the sunlight in marked contrast to the mounted sergeants’ dull crimson brigandines.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And there, on the opposite side of the wheelhouse, was the Kingslayer, Ser Jaime Lannister, fully a golden man with long, flowing locks and an arrogant sneer marring his otherwise handsome face. His enamelled white Kingsguard plate glimmered in the weak Northern sun, overshadowed with clouds though it was, and soon the entire party came to a stop. Queen Cersei, her golden crown christening her elaborately-styled golden locks, waited for Ser Jaime to come around and help her from her horse, slipping gracefully to the ground. King Robert had one of his no doubt many squires, a weak-looking, effeminate man with the golden hair of the Queen-Consort and the Kingslayer, no doubt a cousin of some sort who got the appointment through nepotism, helping him down.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Coming forth from the rearguard came a man who needed no introduction; his very presence was suffocating. It pressed on the senses and began to slowly crush with its weight as he grew closer. He was decorated in Lannister colours, but was older than all assembled by a number of decades. His face was set into a seemingly perpetual scowl, a dour man, but still possessing a singular regality of which the man who, perhaps in name only, held the crown, was distressingly bereft.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This, she knew, was Lord Tywin Lannister, Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, and the richest man in Westeros by all accounts. A ruthless and hard man by her father’s estimate, but also undeniably effective, he had been serving as interim Hand of the King since Jon Arryn’s death a month prior. With him came a column of Westerlands knights, longbowmen, and infantry shod in crimson and gold. The letter telling her father of the king’s approach did not detail that such a force would be accompanying them, she knew, and she saw in Lord Eddard’s face a fearful and tense set to his normally stoic jaw that most would miss, but not her, and certainly not Lord Tywin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dark wings, dark words, and the tidings are dark indeed,” said King Robert after catching his breath. Truly the realm was in a sad state when the king and lord protector of the Seven Kingdoms was winded by the act of dismounting his bloody horse. “My Hand is dead, and I hear of dragonspawn in the east. My only wonder, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lord Stark,</span>
  </em>
  <span> is why I didn’t hear of </span>
  <em>
    <span>it </span>
  </em>
  <span>from </span>
  <em>
    <span>you.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your majesty, I…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Winterfell is mine, I know. But it’s all lip, isn’t it? It’s all </span>
  <em>
    <span>been </span>
  </em>
  <span>lip. I knew I should have been suspicious when you wanted me to show mercy to that cunt Rhaegar’s misbegotten spawn, but I trusted you, Ned. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I avenged your father and your brother, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>this </span>
  </em>
  <span>is how you repay me?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lord Eddard’s jaw set. “Beg pardon, but I believe your knight the Kingslayer did me </span>
  <em>
    <span>that </span>
  </em>
  <span>service. Broke his vows and cast aside his honour and everything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Don’t talk to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me </span>
  </em>
  <span>about your precious ‘honour,’ </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eddard,</span>
  </em>
  <span>” said Robert. “Ser Jaime proved himself. He has shown himself to have more honour in his </span>
  <em>
    <span>little finger </span>
  </em>
  <span>than </span>
  <em>
    <span>you, </span>
  </em>
  <span>for all your </span>
  <em>
    <span>talk, </span>
  </em>
  <span>have done ever since you let those Kingsguard cunts get away with the dragonspawn!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And what of you, Robert! I’ve heard the stories of your drinking and your whoring, living like a lush ever since you were young! My sister…!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Your sister!</span>
  </em>
  <span>” Robert roared. “Don’t talk about Lyanna to me! I loved her! A thousand brothers with all their quantity of love could not make up my sum!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will not have you dishonouring her memory! You never knew her, let alone loved her!” cried Eddard. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Lyanna deserved more!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“On that, at least, we can agree,” hissed Robert. “Execute him.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lord Tywin waved forward a knight with a singularly intense stare. The knight brought forth a sword and drove it through Lord Eddard’s chest, and as he collapsed, beheaded him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The one who passes the sentence should swing the sword.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Those were her father’s words, the way of the North. And when the rest of her siblings looked away, she stared on.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>King Robert waved forward the Lannister squire, who brought forth a sword so bejeweled and so gilded that the fat man could barely lift it. He turned to her brother, Robb, and said, “Kneel, boy. Kneel if you value your life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Robb seemed ready to remain standing, but Sansa, the next oldest, and therefore next in the line, kicked him in the back of the knee surreptitiously, making him go to his knees. Robert, blinded by his rage, did not see this. Doubtless the oaf thought that he had knelt of his own accord. Robert brought his blade to bear and pressed it to each of his shoulders. “I hereby dub you Lord of Winterfell, Lord Paramount and Warden of the North. Don’t fuck this up the way your traitor of a father did, and maybe I won’t bring the rest of the fucking realm down upon this frozen shithole of a wasteland. And to make sure you behave, the Crown is taking a hostage.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Two Stormlanders came forth and grabbed Sansa by the arms, and brought her to the wheelhouse before forcing her in. She did not kick, she did not scream. She knew that those would not help her. A Northern lady always projected strength, after all. She was allowed, then, to watch the proceedings for a time as the king wheeled his Stormlanders around and brought them out, and Lord Tywin glared at her siblings, Bran, Rickon, and Robb, in turn, no doubt evaluating them while he attempted to cow them with his gaze, before doing the same to his soldiers. Then the queen entered the wheelhouse, and the door closed behind her. She knew then that she would likely never see them again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Be strong, Robb.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>The King’s Road was bumpy and ill-maintained, and she travelled sandwiched in the corner with the three royal heirs. Tommen, Myrcella and Joffrey were their names, and they were golden-haired and beautiful, but Sansa was not fooled. The heirs of such a king as Robert Baratheon were liable to look fair but feel foul.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Along the way, they had stopped at every town, and at every town and keep, King Robert made it a point to engage in as much barbarism and debauchery as he could accomplish in a night. He hadn’t touched her yet, because that was beyond him as far as cruelty went, or so she thought, but she didn’t doubt that it would only be a matter of time. After all, she was growing quite comely, beautiful even, and she did not delude herself into thinking otherwise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was at night that Lord Tywin called her to his tent, Ser Jaime coming to her with his sword at his hip and flanked by Lannister guards. Assenting, Sansa went with him to the large pavilion that dominated the centre of the Lannister camp, and within sat the man who had ordered her father dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Leave us,” said Lord Tywin curtly. The Lannister guards bowed, and left. Tywin looked up shortly thereafter to see Jaime still there, and said, “I didn’t know you were deaf as well as stupid, Jaime. Out.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jaime hesitated, but bowed and left. Sansa and Tywin remained, alone in a tent, and Sansa contemplated how easy it would be to simply slip a knife in between his ribs right then, cursing her lack of foresight for not concealing a weapon on her person. “What are you concocting, Stark?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You heard me, girl, and I detest having to repeat myself,” said Tywin, levelling the full force of his legendary pale-eyed gaze upon her. He was broad-shouldered and imposing, bald, but with prodigious gold mutton-chops adorning the sides of his face. “But I suppose you Northern savages may not be as duplicitous as the rest of the realm, so just this once, I will ask again. What are you plotting?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa stared at him, and he met her gaze levelly, unimpressed. “Your downfall, my lord.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He cocked an eyebrow. “I see you’ve no more talent for subtlety than Cersei. A pity.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sighed, looking back down at what he was working on, likely administrative work for Casterly Rock. “Are apologies all you have to offer, girl?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa, realising that she had moments left to live, decided to throw caution to the wind. “That, and threats of eventual retribution.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Between you and your father, I am beginning to think that you Northern lot are chronically without sense.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>This man allowed my father to die,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>But if I am to survive, it seems I must play his game.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“True, courtly intrigue is rather rare further north than the Neck,” replied Sansa, choosing her words carefully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then it would suit you, perhaps, to learn.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I suppose I would be in the debt of whomever saw fit to instruct me,” she remarked.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He looked up again, and held her gaze for a few long moments. “You looked on when your siblings looked away. Why?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A lady’s duty is to lose her innocence to a man, it seems,” Sansa replied. “Perhaps I saw fit to get in a bit of practise.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I was wanting for wit, I’d be speaking to a fool,” Tywin spat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Then perhaps you ought to have sent for one to discern the motives of a girl whose father you just had your man execute,” said Sansa.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tywin paused, putting down his quill into the inkpot on his desk. “From now on, you are my ward, girl. You will come to me when the sun goes down, and you will play the high harp in the corner. I’m told you were instructed in its use. You will observe all that goes on, and if you’ve only half the idiocy that you displayed tonight, I will consider teaching you to play cyvasse.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I know how to play cyvasse,” said Sansa.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Tywin eyed her with a twinge of what seemed to be amusement. “Not well enough, it seems. Jaime, you may enter. I’m done with the girl.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Jaime walked in and bowed to his father. Tywin eyed him impassively, with a shade of disappointment seeming to cloud o’er his gaze. She stared for a moment, and then followed the golden-haired Lannister twin out of the tent and back to her gilded cage. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I know how unpleasant it is to have to converse with my father for any length of time…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa gave him an absent nod of acknowledgement, and with that, she turned away and entered the tent, where Myrcella, Tommen and Cersei sat awaiting her return. Tommen did little and less, being little more than a toddler that Cersei still called ‘sweetling,’ while Myrcella was a fool girl who thought that her mother was the perfect paragon of righteousness, and Cersei continued to poison her mind against the king. Not that that was a difficult task; Robert was, by all accounts, a horribly absentee father and a hulking brute at that during the best of times, when his drinking and whoring was not done to excess. Well, further excess, at the very least. Myrcella thus thought that Sansa was only slightly less detestable than a sewer rat, but still better than Robert Baratheon. Tommen didn’t think much of anything, being of an age with Rickon, who thought little and less of what Sansa felt was all too much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The less that was said of Joffrey, who slept in Ser Jaime’s tent, the better. The boy, who was of an age with her, seeing no need to even be cordial with her, quickly revealed himself to be the most despicable person she had ever had the displeasure of meeting, including the king who had her father killed and didn’t even have the honour to execute Lord Eddard himself. She remembered the addendum her father often added to his saying. “If you are to execute a man, you owe it to him to look him in the eye and hear his last words. If you cannot do that, then perhaps that man does not deserve to die.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was a lesson she would not have learned had her little sister Arya not been a stillbirth. The distance Lady Catelyn put between herself and her daughter following the death of her child had shaken from Sansa the girlishness of youth, the belief in songs and ballads, in true knights and happy endings. It had shaken her from the stupour of the Faith of the Seven, and turned her to the Old Gods for help and comfort. And while the Old Gods sent none, they never deceived anyone into thinking that such would be forthcoming, as the Seven did. Spending more time with her father and dismissing Septa Mordane, she had learned to be a lady in the Northern fashion and not the Southern. Strong, proud, resolute. These were the words she aspired to be. Not foolish, beautiful, and delicate. True beauty, her father had once told her, came from within.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thus it was with a hard heart and little patience that she saw Myrcella practising her sewing in the corner of the tent. A useful hobby in limited quantities for menfolk and womenfolk alike, admittedly, but embroidery, such as what the Septa taught Myrcella, was a useless skill, and thus not one that Sansa cared to learn. She spent her time doing her arithmetic and reading whatever she could get her hands on, which perplexed Myrcella, and did little to endear her to the southron princess. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa knew that Myrcella, like most southron nobles, was content to allow the maesters to run the household finances; the Stark lady, however, knew from her father that it was folly to trust implicitly one whose loyalties were divided. The story of Ashara Dayne’s stillborn daughter still haunted her, and whenever she saw a maester after that, she remembered only that the grey sheep, as her father’s friend, Archmaester Marwyn, with whom her father had conspired for years, called the vast majority of maesters, would stoop to any evil, even the killing of a baby and her mother, in what they saw as their calling to ‘serve the realm.’ </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>‘Serve the realm.’ As though trying to extinguish one of the fundamental forces of the cosmos would benefit anybody or anything save their own overblown egos. The First Men were touched by magic, or so her father often told her, as were the Valyrians, and so she knew better to trust anyone who wore the chain as far as she could throw them. To her, the chain was but a shackle that bound the grey sheep to their preconceived notions of how the world should be. It was only because Archmaester Marwyn, alone, it seemed, amongst the maesters who understood that the world worked the way it worked and that attempting to change it was at best an exercise in futility, personally vouched for Maester Lewin’s loyalty that she even allowed the man to instruct her. That was not to say that Archmaester Marwyn was trustworthy; he was simply decent enough of a man and enough of an altruist to admit openly that he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>worthy of trust, unlike the rest of the maesters, who lacked the self-awareness that Marwyn openly professed to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Myrcella’s frustrated huff brought Sansa careening out of her reverie. “You know, for a traitor to the crown, you’re awfully boring!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Better I be boring than an idiot…” Sansa hissed out of the corner of her mouth.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Let the malcontent be, Myrcella,” said Cersei, and for once, Sansa was grateful to the queen for her intercession. “The northerners are a dull folk.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As I said, better dull than dullard.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cersei’s mouth twisted into a grimace for a moment before it settled once more into an indulgent expression. “I would disagree. The best thing for a girl to be in the world is a beautiful little fool.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And now I see why T…</span>
  <em>
    <span>Lord</span>
  </em>
  <span> Tywin is so disappointed in you specifically. By all accounts, you have all the ambition in the world, but it’s all wasted on a vicious idiot like you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Like it or not, fool girl, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>learn your place. Better and smarter women than you have tried and failed to break the mould,” Cersei hissed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Of course. Better and smarter also tends to mean more arrogant and so they simply failed to acknowledge the full extent of the threats around them. I do not intend to make that mistake,” said Sansa, her tone both prim and grave. “You southerners and your Rhoynar poison, teaching your daughters that their places are on their backs. Which, given the size of your husband, must be a miserable affair for you. Or perhaps it is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>so</span>
  </em>
  <span> miserable when your lover is inside you, hmm? Tell me, does he have golden hair like his children?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...What?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’d be surprised at the things a mockingbird will divulge when you twist his strings </span>
  <em>
    <span>just</span>
  </em>
  <span> right,” Sansa continued. “The first lesson that you never learned, Cersei, is this. There are two things a man is always willing to believe about a woman. One, that she is weak, and two, that she finds him attractive.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mommy, what is that horrible woman saying…?” asked Tommen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m saying that after all the whores your ‘father’ goes through like they’re disposable, I’d be surprised if his fat arse can even get it up for your mother at the end of the day. To the point: while your mother is most </span>
  <em>
    <span>certainly </span>
  </em>
  <span>your mother, your father is not your sire.” Sansa watched with some degree of annoyance as the foolish child seemed to be more confused by her statement. With a resigned sigh she stated flatly, “I’m saying that your mommy doesn’t fuck your daddy.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This earned Sansa a loud, painful slap across her cheek from a very enraged Cersei. “You will </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>continue to say such things in front of my children.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Sure,” Sansa replied as she placed a curious hand on the tender flesh of her cheek. “I’ll say them to your husband instead.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As if he would believe the words of a treacherous Northern bitch.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That is undoubtedly correct,” Sansa said. “But he will start to wonder why and how his children look nothing like him, don’t you think? Wonder why you’re so… what’s the word… frigid? Yeah, that sounds fine.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cersei looked as if she was about to say something, but just then Sansa noted with no shortage of surprise, concealed though it might have been, when after stopping for a moment in shock at Sansa’s words, Myrcella simply quietly went back to her embroidery. “Ah…</span>
  <em>
    <span>Her Grace </span>
  </em>
  <span>and the royal consort are not as discreet as they would like to think they are, are they, Myrcella mine?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will not dignify that with a response, malcontent,” Myrcella said blithely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh? And what happens when this house of tarokka cards comes crashing down, hmm? Where will you be then? I wonder if you’ll wish you had made nice with the </span>
  <em>
    <span>malcontent</span>
  </em>
  <span> when you’re on your back in some backwater King’s Landing brothel, claiming royal blood when the only thing about you that’s worth anything anymore is your lovely</span>
  <em>
    <span> golden </span>
  </em>
  <span>hair. Like I said, my friend the Mockingbird is easily controlled. He can be </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>friend, too. You just need to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> friend first. Think to your future. Youthful innocence is a luxury a highborn whore can ill afford to maintain indefinitely.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And what kind of friend would you be to </span>
  <em>
    <span>me, </span>
  </em>
  <span>malcontent?” asked Myrcella levelly as her mother sat silently in shock and fury.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The kind that would just </span>
  <em>
    <span>love </span>
  </em>
  <span>to see a pretty little tear tattooed under that right eye of yours. And know this…” Sansa then reached out and alighted her hand upon Myrcella’s budding breast, just above her heart. “Though the life of a Volantene woman might be in your future no matter </span>
  <em>
    <span>what</span>
  </em>
  <span> you do—you can thank your mother for that—they say in Dorne and Essos alike that a woman’s touch is far finer and more tender than a man’s fumbling advances. Think on it, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Myrcella mine.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“As for you, your grace, I would love to stay and chat, but I find myself exhausted of your boorish company, and would like to retire.”</span>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>The next night saw Sansa in Lord Tywin’s tent early. After a day of finally being allowed to ride, which Cersei had been all in favour of, like a proper lady of the North, as opposed to some preening southern peacock, she was feeling quite refreshed and in-power. But one look at the unimpressed visage of Lord Tywin, and she knew that extolling the virtues of her day were not welcome. So Sansa bit her tongue and wandered into the corner of the room, picking up the exquisite gilded high harp that sat there. It was not especially well-made, unfortunately, not like the one ancient one that Archmaester Marwyn had given her on her tenth nameday. That one was a work of art. This was just heavy, unwieldy--gaudy, even. It occurred to her that it was entirely possible that none of the Lannister pride were even remotely familiar with the instrument, and what separated one of quality from one that only looked as though it was of the same stock. She sighed, though, and thought that it was equally likely to be a test. Perhaps Lord Tywin wished to see how she could bear up in the face of adversity. Or perhaps he wished to see if she’d say something about the inferior quality of the instrument.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But as she sat in the corner of the tent, watching as Lord Tywin and his supplicants came into the pavilion, she was struck with the thought of what Cersei would do. And when she realised that Cersei would rather complain that something wasn’t perfect and get her father to fix it for her, instead of bearing up in a bad situation, she resolved to be Cersei’s opposite. She thus tuned the instrument as the men spoke of whores and drink before the old lion called them to order at long last. It was talk of war that occupied them, though Sansa was aware of the eyes upon her, watching for the slightest indication of her ear straining.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Thankfully, Lord Eddard told her always never to bit the hand that fed her, and although she much preferred Archmaester Marwyn’s addendum, to at least wait until she could afford to bite that hand before lashing out like a base animal, she found that her father’s advice was perhaps a tad more poignant right then. As such, she gave the men no excuse to order her forced out; at least, beyond the fact that she was a woman, which she was certain Tywin was already aware of and would not be questioned on. Instead, she continued tuning. And tuning. She was meticulous about it, and unhurried, even when she could feel the questioning gazes being turned upon her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Lord Tywin, could you have not found us a decent minstrel rather than a Northern savage? She probably has no idea how the high harp </span>
  <em>
    <span>works!</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That was Kevan Lannister, she later learned, though at the time she bit her tongue and instead continued tuning. And just when Lord Tywin was about to agree with Kevan, if for no other reason than to minimize the loss of face, she believed that she had perhaps run out of time. Praying to the Old Gods that they look upon her dedication to perfection favourably, and that they watch their daughter, the daughter of the First Men crossing the Neck for the first time in almost two decades, she then strummed a chord on the high harp, and bit back a sigh. Though she would have preferred taking the time to double-check her tuning before a single note left her fingers, she was relieved nonetheless to note that she got the tuning perfect the first time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The chord silenced them, so pure and so vital was its tone, and even Lord Tywin looked over with some degree of surprise. She bit back a smirk, then; if he was surprised then, Lord Tywin would have a lot more to his name when it came to surprises before the night was out.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“‘And who are you,’</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The proud lord said,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>‘That I must bow so low?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Only a cat of a different coat,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That’s all the truth I know~</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“‘A coat of gold, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Or a coat of red,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>A lion still has claws.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And mine are long</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And sharp, my lord,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>As long and sharp as yours~.’</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And so he spoke,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And so he spoke,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That lord of Castamere,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But now the rains weep o’er his hall,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And not a soul to hear~.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“‘And who are you,’</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The proud lord said,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>‘That I must bow so low?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Only a cat of a different coat.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That’s all the truth I know…’</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And so he spoke,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And so he spoke, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That lord of Castamere, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But now the rains weep o’er his hall, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And not a soul to hear.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“And so he spoke, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And so he spoke,</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>That lord of Castamere, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>But now the rains weep o’er his hall, </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>And no one there to hear~.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>As the strains lilted out of the tent, Sansa looked up from her task to see that the men in the tent were speechless, save for Lord Tywin, whose normally grave countenance held but a ghost of a smile, a chimera never fully grasped, but deeply felt. She bowed in her seat, and awaited for Lord Tywin to dismiss the meeting, while still letting the chords of </span>
  <em>
    <span>The Rains of Castamere </span>
  </em>
  <span>float out of the tent, wordlessly but still beautifully.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Finally, when the last of the Westerlands lords were gone and only Tywin and Sansa remained in the tent, she alighted to the ground once more and put the high harp to the side, gently, so that her work would not be entirely undone--she could already hear some of the strings loosening towards the end of her little performance, and she shuddered to think at the amount of work that would go into re-tuning the gilded porous wood of the high harp after the cold of night warped and distorted its very shape--before she at last bowed before Lord Tywin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I trust the high harp was to your liking?” asked the Lord of Casterly Rock.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was…not well made,” she replied. “You were cheated, Lord Tywin. The soft wood it is made from means it is difficult to properly tune, and furthermore does not keep a tune. Add onto that the gold, which, being malleable, in differing temperatures will change and warp the instrument’s structure even more, you can rest assured that this garish thing is worth little more than sitting in a corner, never used.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And yet you played it so well…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“...Through painstaking effort, yes. Lord Tywin, the Bardic Colleges are a guild more insular and secretive than even the Guild of Pyromancers. No true crafter of decent instruments would sell to you such an…ostentatious piece.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah, I see,” said Lord Tywin. “Hard wood, you say?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keeping even a hint of mirth out of her countenance or voice in the face of the famously humourless old lion, she said, “Archmaester Marwyn gave me a high harp for my tenth nameday, and it was perhaps the most beautiful instrument I had ever held. Believe it or not, the Valyrians were once known for things beyond their steel, their dragons, and their…marriage practises. They produced the finest luxury items in the world, and Archmaester Marwyn gave me a Valyrian high harp from the Citadel’s personal stock. No one missed it, of course. I would say you would be hard-pressed to find a maester who would agree with me that a Westerosi instrument could never and </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>never compare to a Valyrian instrument. They’d be wrong, of course; but that would be their position on the subject.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I may give my advice, Lord Tywin, then if you wish to find me an instrument worthy of the time it took to construct it, I would avoid asking your puppet Pycelle and instead ask Archmaester Marwyn for one. Or you could send for my own instrument from Winterfell, but that would take time I don’t think either of us here now possess.” With that, Sansa bowed before the old lion, and asked, “May I then be excused?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hmm. You have indeed given me much to ponder,” said Lord Tywin. “Indeed, you are dismissed.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“My thanks, my lord.” Sansa turned and began to walk to the front of the pavilion.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, and, girl?” called Lord Tywin.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa pivoted on her heel. “Yes, my lord?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In the south, women are given to curtsey, not bow.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“In the south, women are but tools in the machinations of weak and small-minded men. Knowing that you are neither, Lord Tywin, I must nonetheless colour myself perplexed as to the relevance of that comment.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The corner of the old lion’s mouth twitched up into the barely-there chimera of mirth. “As you were, then, girl.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa nodded once more. “My lord.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Slipping out of the pavilion and into the night, she became aware of poorly hidden footfalls behind her. Then again, perhaps she was being unfair; it wasn’t as though her pursuer had had the experience of trying to sneak lemon cakes into her room from the Winterfell kitchens at night. Or the experience of evading Septa Mordane until she finally gave up and accepted that, with Lady Catelyn’s withdrawal, she was firmly out of a job. Either way, the clanking and clacking of a poorly-made bejeweled blade smacking against a leg caused her to easily identify the one who was following her, even though she had yet to make his acquaintance. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your highness,” she addressed without even halting a step, let alone turning around. “I assume you are accosting me for a reason this late at night?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You said something to my mother. I demand satisfaction.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At this, Sansa did actually pause and turn to regard Prince Joffrey. He was tall for his age, and slender, pretty like a girl, but for all his fair looks, he felt foul. That suited Sansa’s purposes just fine, however. Her black heart would never be able to stomach one that bled. “And do you happen to know what I said to your mother, or are you here on her orders?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joffrey scoffed. “Mother would </span>
  <em>
    <span>never </span>
  </em>
  <span>order me!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh? Is that so?” Sansa inquired, putting her hands on her hips. “And are you certain she didn’t twist my words and make it so that you felt compelled to come to me for…</span>
  <em>
    <span>satisfaction?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She put just enough double entendre and innuendo in her voice that Joffrey seemed to catch onto it, and reddened, blustering and stepping back. Sansa sighed to herself. </span>
  <em>
    <span>So, he’s an innocent after all, at least when it comes to, well, this. This is going to take a lot of work.</span>
  </em>
  
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Look, </span>
  <em>
    <span>cub. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I don’t want to be out here in the cold any more than you do. But if you think for so much as a </span>
  <em>
    <span>moment</span>
  </em>
  <span> that listening to your mother will make you king for any amount of time beyond when the Queen of Thorns decides you’re more trouble than you’re worth, you’re more of a fool than even your uncle Tyrion gives you credit for,” huffed Sansa. “I know the look of someone haunted by prophecy. My father and his good-brother Rhaegar were both obsessed with one in particular. So trust me when I say you’d best realise that your mother is at best disposable and at worst a liability to your rule sooner rather than later.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then she saw it. It was there, just for a flash. A spark of real brilliance in his eyes. Then it winked out as he grasped his head. Sansa sighed. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Of course. Pycelle, you absolute idiot.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She rushed to Joffrey’s side and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him along to his tent, and ordering Ser Jaime out with a death-glare. With his hands in the air in supplication, the long-haired Kingsguard backed out of the tent, leaving them together.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Where is your silver cup?” Sansa demanded.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Now see here…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa backhanded Joffrey savagely across the face, almost drawing blood. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>One </span>
  </em>
  <span>more word that is not an answer to my question, and I do worse than hit you again.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then that flash happened again. And this time, Joffrey managed to seize upon it. “It’s in the trunk. But why…?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And how long have you been drinking from silver cups? Eating from silver plates?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“A...as long as I can remember. So…”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa swore. “You’ve been poisoned. You’re </span>
  <em>
    <span>being </span>
  </em>
  <span>poisoned. That state of affairs has persisted for, as you have said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>as long as you can remember.</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Poisoned?! But by whom?!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That unchaste wastrel, Grand Maester Pycelle. You know, for all that he and his grey ilk love to look down on women, they certainly made for a womanly choice of poison.” Sansa cursed Cersei’s name in a language that she had only begun learning. High Valyrian was a dead language, and Archmaester Marwyn knew her well enough to start on the swear words first. “Silver cups and tools are an old trick used by older women to keep their husbands pliable. They induce devastating migraines, cause immense damage to the mind, and eventually even drive the imbiber mad. In fact, it was suspected that silver was used by every male Targaryen since Aegon V, most notably with the Mad King.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Listen to me, Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon. And listen well,” she said seriously. “There is a spark of magic about you, unlike the base arts of Asshai and Qarth. Your uncle Gerion may have been the last to attempt to find Brightroar, but I suspect only you will be able to wield it. In this, your mother’s stupidity may have lent us a boon. But make no mistake, that spark of brilliance in you will be under attack on all sides who want a king that is easily manipulated, easily controlled. The grey sheep, the Small Council, your mother, your grandfather. The only ones you can trust, then, are those through whose veins magic flows, too. And for the moment, that is I </span>
  <em>
    <span>and only I,</span>
  </em>
  <span> do you understand?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joffrey nodded wordlessly, his eyes wide in terror.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sansa smiled sweetly. “Good. Don’t worry, sweetling. We’ll see you on the throne yet. Just make sure to do everything I say, and I will see you made into a great king. And remember, I am the </span>
  <em>
    <span>only </span>
  </em>
  <span>one you can trust. I am the </span>
  <em>
    <span>only </span>
  </em>
  <span>one who could </span>
  <em>
    <span>possibly </span>
  </em>
  <span>understand, I, the last trueborn daughter of the First Men, descendant of Bran the Builder. Place your trust in me, and I swear to you. I will </span>
  <em>
    <span>never </span>
  </em>
  <span>lead you astray.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Joffrey nodded, and Sansa smirked. Then she rested her hand, slowly, gingerly, upon his groin. “Now, then. Shall we begin?”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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